Proud to Be a Girl

Earlier this month a certain girl in Lugazi, Uganda (let us call her Sara) declared, “I curse the day I was born a girl.”

Why?

Sara was born the eldest of 5 children, her father died last year, and her mother is HIV position. There is no money for clothes or shoes or school supplies. Also, there is no money for sanitary pads. (Men, try to stay with me!).

As almost any woman can attest, feminine hygiene products are something you take for granted, that is, until the moment you need them and don’t have them. For a young girl in Uganda this lack of access is not only uncomfortable, humiliating, and unhygienic – it also keeps you from school several days a month. This is one of the reasons girls in Uganda drop out of secondary school at a much higher rate than boys read more here. Amidst these problems, this young lady is being pressured not by one random creeper, but by four different men who say they will give her money and other goods in exchange for sex.

Sara is not alone in her regret of being born a girl. The truth is – at least for everywhere I have ever been - economic, social, and physical conditions seem to suck a bit more if you are woman. In case you are unsure, here is a journalist who chronicles the plight of women around the world.

In spite of all of this, women are amazing beings. We are diverse and beautiful and powerful. Girls like Sara have so much potential, so much to offer their communities and the world. Women should be proud.

Enter, my friend Wilson, a young Ugandan who had started a totally volunteer-based community organization call The Youth Outreach Mission (TYOM). He was so concerned with the plight of young girls in his community that he decided to act. With the help of volunteers from HELP International, Wilson and his team (which includes men and women) began visiting secondary schools and implementing a program called “Proud to be a Girl”. They have an empowerment-based curriculum that offers opportunities for girls to be introduced to powerful female role-models, learn about their rights, get information about sex, ask questions anonymously, share experiences, set goals, and express all the reasons they have to be proud.

A sense of worth is not only important through the lens of gender equity; it has real social environmental and economic impacts. For instance:

It is pretty clear that high fertility rates contribute to poverty and environmental degradation in sub-Saharan Africa. If a family perceives that a girl’s main value comes from transactional sex or from the amount her husband pays for her (bride price) or from her ability to push out babies, then it is likely she will bare children early and often. Yet if you increase a girl’s worth outside reproduction (through changing mindsets, increasing education, opening economic opportunity and so on) that increases the opportunity cost of having children, thus reducing the number of children she will want to have.

Now, you might think that if you just increased household income in general that that could increase gender equity and ultimately reduce birthrates. But I think you would be wrong. First, because if you increase the man’s income and not the woman’s, then you decrease the comparative value of her efforts outside reproduction. Secondly, (and more convincingly) this article explains how economic development in China and India has actually led to worse outcomes for women.

So, I think changing mindsets about the value of women matters.

Random example? This study of the spread of Brazilian cable television channels argues that the introduction of telenovelas (of all things!) reduced fertility rates amongst the rural poor. Why? Well, it altered how women view themselves and changed their aspirations (along with introducing them to melodrama and a whole other set of controversial gender roles, but that’s a different story).

Now, these telenovelas are ridiculous (and kind of smutty), but they also show urban, affluent women that have liberal values, less children, and are engaged in many self-actualizing activities (such as working). Rural Brazilian women began to absorb new points of view. As an effect of watching these telenovelas, women desired less kids. (In case you think this is an isolated case here is another study done in India on TV and gender norms)

I am not sure if Wilson’s school presentations are as enticing and entertaining as Brazilian telenovelas (actually I hope they are not), but I think the there is reason to believe that encouraging girls to be proud is more than just a feel-good project.

I grew up proud. Suzie and The Bear (aka Mom and Dad) were always going on about imagined strengths. “Ashley, you are such fast swimmer” false. “Ashley, you are a wonderful singer” false. “Ashley, you are so pretty in your blue-rimmed bifocals” cruel and false. But somehow I was naive enough to let a few of their lies sink in. Every girl deserves that.

Aimless Wanderer

Last Sunday, I put on a long blue and white bold-printed dress with a shawl to cover my shoulders. I was pleased with my "culturally appropriate" attire. Just perfect, I thought, for meeting with my friends and their women's group in a village outside Lugazi. When I got on the matatu (a public mini-bus that usually carries between 16 and 24 passengers) my dress snagged something on the door and I heard a long rip. I quickly sat down and a man outside the matatu made a large motion around his rear to indicate that my dress was torn. I tried to feel around the fabric to figure out how big the opening was, but I was squeezed so tightly between two other passengers that I couldn’t move my shoulders. At the next stop when I had to get out to let the man next to me leave, I pulled at the back of my dress and to my horror found I had huge hole in my dress, exposing way too much!

Mortified, I got back in the matatu and soon a robust Luganda conversation began, peppered with a word I know all too well mzungu. Yep, everyone was talking about the silly girl (me) and all her bare white skin. Soon the matatu filled with half-stifled laughter. I was too overcome with humiliation to join in. But really, who wouldn’t think that was funny?

The thing about it though, is that it made me feel really isolated. I had these flashbacks to junior high, a time when awkward adolescents, like I was, feel continually shut out of a social universe they are desperate to join. Hearing the hissing of mzungu, mzungu, mzungu all day reminds me of lunch tables I got kicked off of and birthday parties I was never invited to.

Being different, a foreigner, a wierdo, an outsider, a mzungu is confusing. On one hand you feel watched, isolated, judged. Even dehumanized? But, at least in this case, people are not trying to hurt me. Many are often genuinely interested and fascinated by my difference. Others have likely met other mzungus and experience tells them certain things about me. And in the end I really believe that bias is less about people and more the systems they find themselves in. This this case, a system that is rife with inequities and hypocrisy and corruption and racism and neocolonialism and other bad isms. A system in which money is controlled from places where many people look like me and decisions are made for “less developed” places where most people don’t.

Anyway, so I have struggled with this label “muzungu” or “mzungu”. If you do some not-so-academic googling you’ll find competing etymologies of this word. Some explaining it comes from roots to describe a “white person” or “foreigner” or “European”, but my favorite are the ones that say it is most directly translated as “aimless wanderer”.

I like this best. Somehow it is more pleasant to be labeled for a peculiar action than for a peculiar physical characteristic. I think my adolescent self would have agreed. And again, it reminds me of something that happened in junior high:

I was getting restless in history class and was being so disruptive that Mr. Robinson was as tired of me as I was of him. So, he wrote me a hall pass (time: 1:15 purpose: bathroom) and told me not to come back until class was almost over. But the librarian spoiled our plan and sent me back to class saying, “your pass, young lady, does not give you permission to just wander aimlessly!” When I explained the encounter to Mr. Robinson, he gave me an exasperated I'm-about-to-retire-why-are-you-people-torturing-me look, and wrote me a new pass. Purpose: wander aimlessly.